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Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 5:20 pm
by edededed
Thanks D_Glenn - weirdness is good, I was born to be attracted to the weird ;D Zhuangtai = 状态, right? Interesting again, your 3 descriptions seem to mesh well with the different speeds of walking the circle. I wonder what the 3rd state would feel like for standing zhanzhuang practitioners - might be tough to run while standing ;)

Kelley - my understanding is that different schools have different ways to get the microcosmic circulation going; the bagua way is similar to the old Daoist internal alchemy, the taiji way is more gentle and natural, the xingyi way is more stepwise and forced, the (ancestral?) yoga way we can see (khecari above) has a lot of specific details and does seem more drastic than the Chinese ways. Interesting to see how methods have evolved/changed. In general, I get the feeling that the gentler ways have much less risks, but take longer.

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 6:38 pm
by I-mon
There is another version of Khecari mudra, where you don't need to slice up your tongue, you just put your attention in that spot where the tip of your tongue would go if you'd stretched it enough, and just by keeping your awareness there or kind of tickling it with your attention, the sweet bliss nectar starts to flow.

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 4:52 am
by wayne hansen
The tongue doesn't to have to be that far back for the heavenly dew to rain

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 10:09 am
by D_Glenn
edededed wrote:Thanks D_Glenn - weirdness is good, I was born to be attracted to the weird ;D Zhuangtai = 状态, right? Interesting again, your 3 descriptions seem to mesh well with the different speeds of walking the circle. I wonder what the 3rd state would feel like for standing zhanzhuang practitioners - might be tough to run while standing ;)
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For a long time I was letting the different states control my speed but Jinbao instructed me to just practice at one slow speed throughout the whole session. It actually helps to maintain that third state longer.
Dr. Xie had made some videos and a book where he shows a sitting meditation where you’re doing the same thing but it uses a lot of physical leaning far forward and backwards repetitively. The process is more detailed out and specific - ‘opening the 3 exterior/ superficial gates (gates at base of mountain passes where the guard won’t let you pass until the weather is clear), then proceed to opening the 3 interior gates. But it’s only serving health purposes, where circle walking covers health and fighting, although since CW is not specifically trying to open gates, it’s not going to produce the same degree of state changes or the feeling of surging. The goal or notion of doing it while just standing is probably just something that nobody actually ever achieves.
Also in the CW and maybe the sitting (I can’t find my copy of the book) you don’t visualize or try to trace the route using your mind. Only make sure the physical locks are held and then just the physical movements of the body (bai and kou stepping in CW and the leaning in sitting.)

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:46 am
by edededed
Interesting stuff - thanks again. First time I heard of the vigorous leaning back and forth method, cool to know about it. I guess that it is sort of like raja/kriya yoga, but with the leaning. Always interesting how many different methods aim for the same eventual goal - so there are many ways to do it, but often with many similarities. Maybe the leaning forward and backward helps to strengthen the feeling building up in the belly?

I also was told not to visualize or anything during circle walking. I guess that sitting methods have both kinds (visualizing and not).

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 5:09 am
by wiesiek
@D_Glenn
How many days you have to walking circle to get "the pill" impression?
I was walking 40 minutes a day, but didn`t achieved it. /to short period unbroken practice?/

Pill is not co-related with the heavenly dew, I suppose.
Lot of saliva is produced when you keep tongue in the discussed position,
sometimes really very sweet :)

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:08 am
by D_Glenn
Experiencing the State changes while circle walking is the most important thing. The golden pill thing is incidental.

40 minutes would be too short. My teacher recommends at least 1 hour which should allow you to experience that 3rd state for about 10 minutes. After you have consistently practiced for at least an hour over many months then the state changes will start to naturally compress into smaller segments of time. I can experience all three in 45 minutes now.
Consistency is don’t worry about skipping a day every now and then and definitely try to not miss more than two days in a row as that will set back progress. Don’t worry or obsess over feeling the state changes because some days your body just won’t undergo the process. You can’t force it.

The story I heard about the Golden pill is that gold has nothing to do with the color. The real pill can’t be seen. Gold only describes something of great value or a possession that you keep close to your heart. I’ve just heard of the yoga terms but I’m tending to think that those terms are also being misinterpreted or thinking they correspond with an actual color of some substance. I may be wrong (or I may be right), but I am always the skeptic. I wish I hadn’t been so close-minded when I started practicing Bagua in 1996 because I didn’t really believe in [edit- continuous] circle walking until around 2006 [edit up until then I just looked at it as a physical martial practice and doing 15 minutes here and there.] so many younger years of time were wasted. [edit- And I’ve never actively sought after any metaphysical experiences, and I’m still very much a skeptic, hence why I’m so interested in the research looking into the Glymphatic System.] so compared to others I am still an amateur/ have very little experience in this area.

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Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 12:20 pm
by D_Glenn
Just found an interesting link on Khechari https://formlessart.wordpress.com/

He’s saying that the tongue touching the soft palate causes or facilitates the other posture requirements: lengthen the neck, tuck the chin, rolling baihui point (the crown of the head to top), rounding the back, concave the chest, tuck the tailbone and press out the lumbar (which brings Huiyin point back into vertical alignment with Baihui point).

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Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Fri Mar 08, 2019 6:35 pm
by wayne hansen
Heavenly dew is not just sweetness in saliva but a whole other phenomena

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 12:37 am
by Bao
It is said that when the qi has reached the upper dantian and nourishes the Shen, more saliva is produced. So this should be the cause of long term neigong practice. My mouth does produce much saliva, something even me wife has noticed and mentioned. But I can’t say that I feel very spiritual or enlightened. For what I know it could just as much has been caused by eating too much sour candy...

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 2:20 am
by Trick
keeping it at the right place is important, things might get awkward if it slip 8-)

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 7:06 am
by D_Glenn
Circle walking is also known as a Xing Zhuang (which I translate as a Moving Standing Meditation). The tjq form is also considered to be (if practiced correctly) a Xing Zhuang. In circle walking you only have to learn one upper body posture and bai and kou stepping to get around the circle. Which could take a few months of daily practice to not have to think about what you’re doing. And no-thinking is what’s required for the mco and such to happen. In tjq there’s a shit ton of things to learn but only one form so not too much in the way of choreography. Not having to think about what move comes next is crucial. The accuracy of each movement can be refined over time while meditating but there must be the slow undulating motion of the whole spine, mainly the sacrum and kua area is opening and closing, and opening and closing of the chest and shoulders, but the form is designed to maximize these movements. But it will still take maybe a year or so of diligent daily practice before it can be done in as a Xing Zhuang.
Chen Xiao Wang told me that he started breaking the form into sections where each section has a Fali (Baguazhang also does a Fali using the undulating spine in a fast motion, to give the MCO a sort of jolt). This way someone can just focus on a single small section for a long time and arrive at obtaining the benefits of Xing Zhuang sooner. Then practice this section doing XZ for an hour and then learning a new section afterwards. Once the new section is fully learned and memorized, you can add it into the other.
DHC jokingly said ‘In bgz we only have to learn 2 steps, but in tjq you have to learn 108.”

I believe XYQ also has their own Slow form which was supposed to be done as a Xing Zhuang.

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Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 2:43 pm
by I-mon
http://discovermagazine.com/2019/apr/take-a-deep-breath

Deep Breathing Might Have Benefits We're Only Beginning to Understand
One researcher's push to understand how an ancient yoga technique can change our cells.

By Sara Novak|Tuesday, March 12, 2019

As a cell biologist, Sundar Balasubramanian never forgot his rural southern Indian roots, or the traditional practices his uncle, the village healer, exposed him to. Today, as a researcher and assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, Balasubramanian has turned his focus back to those roots — specifically, to pranayama, a deep-breathing relaxation technique. He’s showing that this ancient yoga practice is about more than relaxing — it can change us at the cellular level.

Q: What made you examine this technique through a cellular biology lens?

A: In 2005, I noticed while I was practicing pranayama, I was producing so much saliva that I was almost drooling. I wondered why and what the overall impact of that was. This led me and my team to study whether increased saliva production was a common response to the practice, and we found that it was.

Q: Most people wouldn’t think much of getting spitty when they focus on breathing and relaxing. But your 2016 study in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine showed this bump in salivation seems to matter. Why?

A: Saliva has numerous antibodies and proteins that do everything from suppressing tumors to regenerating the liver. For example, it contains immunoglobulin, which are antibodies that bind to germs, as well as DMBT1, a tumor suppressor that blocks the conversion of normal cells to cancer cells.

Q: Your 2015 study in International Psychogeriatrics showed that pranayama does more than just increase salivation. Can you elaborate?

A: Yes, it changes the makeup of saliva by increasing the amount of nerve growth factor (NGF). When NGF is produced, it’s transported to the brain, where it signals nerve cells to grow or survive longer. Increased NGF could have a major impact on aging, and specifically on some of the degenerative diseases of the day like Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Q: Do you have any upcoming or ongoing research projects on pranayama?

A: We’re about to start a study on patients with scleroderma, a chronic disorder that causes the body’s connective tissue to swell and harden. We’ll look at how these breathing techniques impact inflammation and how this relates to disease symptoms. We’re also in the beginning phases of a study that will look at whether deep breathing can reduce pain, improve appetite and improve mood in cancer patients.

Re: Tongue on roof of mouth

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:17 pm
by everything
hmm that's great. I read pranayama as qigong for all practical purposes here.